Libya

The country’s most prestigious university for the study of the Middle East provided one-to-one English tuition to Mutassim Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan dictator, who acts as his national security adviser. It also hosts the controversial Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi on the editorial board for its Journal of Islamic Studies.

Consider this: until two months ago, Libya was a new friend - and a textbook example of the kind of cold, calculated, national interest-driven foreign policy that would get results and save the West from sentimental but ill-conceived efforts to export democracy to the Middle East.

Since writing a piece for this week’s Jewish Chronicle urging people to back the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam, I received some disturbing information warning me off. I believe this came from a source close to government. The claims made against Quilliam were serious and my support for the organisation needs to be examined in the light of what they said.

Aldo Habib has not seen the country of his birth since 1967, when his family left Libya in the aftermath of the Six-Day War.

But now he thinks that the British government should consider using some of the £1 billion of frozen assets belonging to the Gaddafi family in this country to compensate Libyan Jews for what they lost.

In a week in which events in Libya have again made us aware of how desperately the people of the Muslim world are crying out for liberty and democracy, how depressing it was to hear that the anti-Islamist Quilliam Foundation could face closure.

There's nothing like a good bit of spring cleaning. So when the General Assembly of the United Nations suspended Libya from the Human Rights Council on March 1, there was a distinct sense of a fresh start. You could almost smell it in the air. Hope at last for the oppressed of the world.